


only the margin to write on now

by Raven (singlecrow)



Category: Cabin Pressure
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-07-12
Updated: 2012-07-12
Packaged: 2017-11-09 20:15:42
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 920
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/457938
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/singlecrow/pseuds/Raven
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>It had been a closed adoption.</i>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	only the margin to write on now

**Author's Note:**

> For this prompt at the kinkmeme: http://cabinpres-fic.dreamwidth.org/4885.html?thread=8546325#cmt8546325 - idfic of the highest order.

"Are you all right, Carolyn?" Martin asked, his head inclined. He was looking relaxed, mischievous - he and Douglas had been playing "Guess the Novel From the First Line", and it was Martin who'd come out on top, murmuring, "It was love at first sight," and savouring Douglas's confusion. 

And that was it, Carolyn thought - the way of holding his head, like Carolyn's own mother, with that small wicked look. "I'm fine, dear," she said absent-mindedly, and paused in alarm, but Martin hadn't noticed the endearment.

"Douglas!" he called over his shoulder. "You should have known that one, it has a lot of planes in it."

"Martin, your _head_ has a lot of planes in it."

_And, dear heart_ , Carolyn was thinking, watching them clamber out of the flight deck laughing, with eyes alight, _I know how you came to be written._

*

After that it slipped into place, piece by piece, until there was no doubt. Douglas and Martin flew the first of two cargo runs to Dubrovnik affectionately bickering, and Carolyn sat curled in one of the passenger seats thinking about dates and days and the particular timbre of Martin's voice.

"Carolyn," came Douglas's dulcet tones, imperious over the intercom, "please would you inform our gracious Captain that his ignorance is astounding. _No one would have believed that in the opening years of the twentieth century…_ "

"Douglas!" came Martin's voice in its turn, "just because you didn't know _Catch-22_ , it doesn't mean…"

"It's the nineteenth century, you pair of idiots," Carolyn said, glad that neither of them could see her face. "The opening years of the _nineteenth_ century."

"You all right, Mum?" Arthur asked on his way to the galley. Carolyn started at "Mum" and turned to look at him properly. He grinned, arms full of blankets.

"I'm fine, Arthur," Carolyn told him gravely. He smiled at her again under the mop of blond hair – he needed a haircut, Carolyn noted absently – and went on down the aisle. Carolyn's hair had been auburn, before. There were shades and shadows of it still, in the sunlight, in the wind, gleaming below all this weight of years.

" _War of the Worlds_ ," Martin announced, satisfied, and switched off the cabin intercom. It was the tiny rhetorical flourish that sealed it, that half-cut-off laugh.

*

On their return, with the aircraft dark on the stand and silence falling over Fitton, Carolyn rummaged through her airline's only other large metal asset under C. Martin's file was right on top, leaping to her hand – but didn't and couldn't open it, not yet.

It had been a closed adoption. They always were in those days. 

In the relative darkness of the room, Martin's papers: no payslips, nothing from HMRC. Regulatory details. A signed employment contract. And there, right at the bottom, the blurred photocopy of his passport.

Carolyn took a deep breath. 

The right date, of course. The picture, taken almost ten years earlier with an eerie youth in his face. Place of birth, Wokingham, and she's heard that from his own lips – something he was telling Douglas about having been born in a country hospital, something they were talking about, something. 

Martin was born in London. She had been poor, back then as now; she'd been an airline steward, then, as now; she had had nothing for a toy to wave but a stolen duty-free model with a broken wing. Lockheed Martin, Carolyn remembered, and here at all this distance in space and time, was able to smile at the thought, just a little.

*

She didn't tell him. What would be the use, after all this time?

On the next flight out they switched over to last lines (Carolyn was interested to learn that "There's no place like home" was not actually the last line of _The Wizard of Oz_ , not that she would admit it was in the slightest bit interesting) and as the aircraft began edging away from the coast, over the Adriatic, Arthur came to sit quietly beside her.

Being Arthur, sitting quietly involved breathing made sterterous with his efforts to remain unnoticed, but Carolyn appreciated it. "What is it, Arthur?" she asked, after a while.

"Just I know you're sad," he said all in a rush, "just lately, and if there's anything I can do, well."

Suddenly he was standing up and then he wasn't there at all, and there were sounds of someone doing things noisily in the galley. Carolyn smiled; Gordon had tried to mould and shape his son in his own image – and Arthur's own self shone like sunshine nevertheless. No use in trying to claim people as your own. 

She made the dinner, after a while, and carried it in to the flight deck. " _Only the margin to write on now, I love you, I love you, I love you._ " 

Douglas snorted. "Martin, really!"

" _I Capture The Castle_ ," Carolyn said smoothly. "Shepherd's pie, chaps. By my fair hand and not Arthur's, so you've no excuse to get food poisoning."

"I fail to understand how you can remember these in such precise and exhaustive detail," Douglas sniped.

"I just remember them." Martin shrugged. "I guess I think that of any story, the first lines and the last lines are the most important."

"Yes, my dear," Carolyn said, quietly, touching his shoulder lightly. She walked slowly back into the cabin, listening to Martin laughing at something Douglas had just said. They were forecast good weather over Fitton; they should come down to land shortly, smooth and easy under a cloudless sky.


End file.
